Amendments to Devolution Bill Will Make Licensing Enforcement Far Easier

The House of Lords has approved a set of amendments to the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill that, once the Bill becomes law, will let licensing officers take immediate enforcement action against taxi and private hire drivers, vehicles and operators regardless of which council issued the licence.

Thee Bill has not yet received Royal Assent. It returns to the Lords tomorrow, on 23 April 2026, for consideration of Commons amendments (the so-called "ping pong" stage), and will only become law once both Houses have agreed a final text and the King has signed it off. Assuming the taxi and PHV provisions survive that process intact, this is a structural change to how licensing works in England, and one that has been a long time coming.

What has been approved

Peers agreed Amendments 299 to 304 to the Bill, which together establish a new legal framework for temporary licence suspensions. The amendments, debated on 13 April, passed without division.

In short, the Bill would give licensing authorities the power to suspend a driver, vehicle or operator licence for up to 48 hours where there is an immediate risk to public safety. Crucially, that power would be exercisable by officers from any authority in England, not only the one that issued the licence.

Alongside this, a formal duty would require authorities to report breaches of national standards back to the issuing authority. The issuing authority then has 20 working days to decide whether to suspend or revoke the licence, creating a clearer, auditable chain of accountability between councils.

A separate amendment (266) also removes the word "minimum" from the Bill's licensing standards and replaces it with "national standards", signalling that the baseline is meant to be robust rather than a lowest common denominator.

A new definition of "enforcement area"

The most consequential piece of drafting sits in Amendment 299, which introduces a formal definition of "enforcement area". Under the new wording, an officer's reach would cover:

• their own licensing authority's area, for the suspension of any regulated licence; and

• the whole of the rest of England, but only for suspending a licence granted by their own authority.

That dual structure is what actually closes the out-of-area loophole. An officer in Droitwich Spa, for example, would be able to suspend a Birmingham-licensed driver working on their patch if there is an immediate safety concern; equally, a Birmingham officer could take action against their own licensee wherever that person happens to be operating.

Amendments 301 to 303 tidy up the supporting vocabulary, introducing clear statutory definitions for "regulated driver licence", "regulated vehicle licence" and "regulated PHV operator licence", along with the concept of a "responsible licensing authority" (the body with the power to revoke). Amendment 304 adds the "suspension notice", which standardises how suspensions are formally communicated to a licence holder.

Together, these definitions consolidate what had previously been scattered across different clauses. The aim is to remove the ambiguity that has historically bogged down enforcement and invited legal challenges.

Secretary of State for Transport Heidi Alexander said:

"It's vital that authorities can act fast to stop dangerous drivers, taxis and private hire vehicles wherever they operate. These new powers will mean safer journeys for everyone with drivers still subject to the highest criminal background checks."

Transport Minister Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill, speaking in the Lords, said the Government had "listened to the concerns raised" about cross-border working and wanted to ensure officers "can take immediate action against any licence, irrespective of which authority issued it".

He also made a point that operators will want to hold on to: out-of-area working, by itself, is not grounds for enforcement. Using these powers purely because a driver is working outside their licensing area would, in his words, be a misuse.

The operator question

Not everything was settled comfortably. Shadow Transport Minister Lord Moylan supported the principle for drivers and vehicles, but pushed back on applying the same immediate powers to operators, particularly larger multi-region firms. His argument was that evidence gathered at the roadside can only ever be partial, and action against an operator should normally flow from a formal investigation by the issuing authority.

Lord Hendy defended keeping operators in scope, citing scenarios such as the "deliberate use of unlicensed drivers and/or vehicles" that an officer reasonably judges to be the operator's choice. He accepted the threshold for use against operators will be high, and said the power is "certainly not intended to be used as a means of punishment".

Baroness Pidgeon, who had previously tabled amendments on cross-border working, welcomed the Government's approach as "a solid way forward" for closing safety gaps.

What it means in practice

For drivers and smaller operators, expect more visible enforcement in areas where you don't hold your licence. The powers are aimed at immediate safety risks (think vehicle defects, fitness concerns or unlicensed substitutes), but once the Bill is in force, officers will have the legal backing to act on the spot rather than referring matters back to a distant council.

For larger fleets operating across multiple regions, the compliance bar rises. Coordination between councils will increase; suspension notices will need to be logged and acted on quickly; and reputational exposure from a local suspension is no longer contained to one patch.

For licensing authorities, the reforms add reach but also responsibility. Officers will need to work within a more formalised national framework, with 20-working-day deadlines to make substantive decisions once a breach is reported. Data on how the powers are used will be collected and published, so how consistently councils apply them will be visible.

This isn't the complete overhaul of taxi and PHV licensing that many in the industry have argued is overdue, and ministers have been candid about that. What it is, though, is a meaningful step towards a single national enforcement model sitting on top of local licensing, for the first time.

We'll be tracking how the final Bill reads on Royal Assent, and how individual authorities interpret the new powers in their day-to-day enforcement.